3rd International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications Milwakuee, USA 19-22 Oct 2014

Design and Analysis of Generator and Converters For

Outer Rotor Direct Drive Gearless Small-scale Wind
Turbines
Yusuf Yasa, Erkan Mese

Yildiz Technical University

Department of Electrical Engineering
Istanbul, Turkey
[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract—This paper focuses on design and analysis issues of type wind turbines are so called direct drive gearless wind
direct drive gearless generator which are widely used in small- turbines because they do not need any gear and they can
scale wind turbines. Permanent magnet synchronous generate power in wide speed range. Also, efficiency of PMSG
generator(PMSG) is designed that is considered for 2.5 kW system is higher and the outer dimensions are smaller than
continuous and 6 kW peak power. Then power converter those of induction generator with a gear [4]. Low installation
topologies are briefly discussed then one of them is selected to and maintenance cost, a flexible control method, high dynamic
develop. The finite element model of PMSG is integrated with system response are the other advantages. However, gearless
power converters and simulated which is named coupled system brings the bulky generator drawback with high pole
simulation provides more realistic results. The results are
numbers which may be considered as disadvantages because of
thought to be guidance for wind turbine developers and
the high inertia[5].
manufacturers.
In PMSG family, either inner rotor or outer rotor can be
Keywords-component; Direct drive, gearless wind turbine, used. In our study, outer rotor is chosen for designing because
inverter, permanent magnet synchronous generator(PMSG), power of the low manufacturing costs and easier construction.
converter, small-scale wind turbine.
The paper is organized as follows; designing of generator is
I. INTRODUCTION mentioned in section II. In section III, power converters is
reviewed then one of them is selected and developed for
The percentage of installed wind power energy systems is control of wind power. Finally, all of them is summarized in
increasing rapidly over the last few decades. Wind power conclusion section.
definitely is not a new energy source in the world. Its age is
same as with world age. Firstly, people started to use wind
II. DESIGNING OF GENERATOR
power with windmills by the 9th century but not for getting
electrical power until nineteenth century. Then, the popularity In this section, design procedure of wind turbine is given.
of getting electrical power from wind power has been Before starting, it will be useful to give restrictions-limitations
continuously increased in academia and in industry. Especially in terms of designing. The input parameters are given in Table
in a few decades, by means of power electronics and I.
environmental concerns [1], wind turbines and wind farms
According to the limitations, because of the desired low
became widespread and one of the promising source of
speed-gearless application, direct drive permanent magnet
renewable energy. Global wind 2013 report [2] says that, by
generator is chosen.
2035, renewable energy source penetration in whole world
electric capacity will be 25% which quarter of this coming
from the wind so it definitely shows the importance of this TABLE I. DESIGN INPUTS
issue. Parameter Value
Rated power (kW) 2.5
The wind power technology in world tends to variable Rated speed (rpm) 150
speed wind power because it has some advantages compare to Rated torque (Nm) 159
fixed speed wind turbines such as less mechanical stress, Maximum allowed weight (kg) 25
higher efficiency, higher power quality, less reactive power Maximum allowed generator diameter (mm) 350
consumption and so on. In variable speed technology, two Grid frequency (Hz) 50
generator types are generally used; doubly-fed induction Number of phases and connection type 3/Y
DC Bus voltage (V) 400
generator (DFIG) and permanent magnet synchronous
generator (PMSG). These two generator types have some
advantages and disadvantages between each other [3]. PMSG

978-1-4799-3795-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE

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A. Modeling of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator given. In design process, designer should be careful about
Permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) is widely some parameters and these parameters do not have strict values
used in industry nowadays which has some advantages because each parameter has also depends on other parameters
compare to other types of generators. These are high power of generator so only maximum values may considerable.
density, high performance at low speed applications, low Outer rotor PMSG is chosen then geometrical inputs which
maintenance cost, high low voltage ride-through capability due are usually provided by costumer is entered. These are given in
to the full power rate converters and so on. However it has also Table-I. Maximum allowed generator diameter would be also
some disadvantages; high manufacturing cost due to the rotor outer diameter in outer rotor configuration. The final
existence of permanent magnets, higher capacity power optimized geometry of PMSG is shown in Fig 4. Now
converters that are needed compare to other generator types parametrical analysis procedure is given.
and thermal limitations because of the permanent magnets. In
addition, political issues on rare earth magnet future would be In first step; steel type of stator, rotor and magnet type
also considered as disadvantage. should be chosen. Then rotor inner-outer diameters, stator
inner-outer diameters, yoke thickness and airgap length are
The behavior of PMSG was already modeled and roughly determined. During determining, magnetic flux density
understood by lots of researchers and there are so many papers of stator and rotor parts should be trying to keep in non-
for that in current literature. To avoid confusion and to provide saturated area of selected steel type. At this step, slot type can
comprehensiveness of paper, the model of PMSG will be be also determined. To adjust the airgap length; the designer
briefly mentioned. should look at the magnetic flux density value of airgap. This
Permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) have value is typically half of the stator teeth flux density. For
two parts; stator and rotor. Rotor has permanent magnets to Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB) magnet used applications,
The Designers is typically trying to keep in 0.75-0.8 Tesla.
create constant magnetic field in electrical machine. Other
time and space varying magnetic field is created with the
stator windings. The windings’ excitation frequency should
match with electrical rotation speed of the rotor. Mathematical
model of PMSG is usually given in rotating reference frame.
Quadrature (q) and direct (d) axis PMSG equations are given
below. Fig 1 shows equivalent circuit of PMSM in d-q frame
[6].
d\ qs
vqs Rs iqs   Z\ ds (1)
dt
d\ ds
vds Rs ids   Z\ qs (2)
dt
\ ds ( Lld  Lmd )ids \ mag Lds ids \ mag (3)

\ qs ( Llq  Lmq )iqs Lqs iqs (4)

3P
Te \ mag iqs (5) Figure 4. The 2D geometry of PMSG.
22
Rs ʘe ʄsq LId In this application, M270-50A steel type is selected for
stator and rotor laminations. In step 2, parametrical analysis
and optimization procedure is started. The parameters for
Vsd
isd ʄsd ʄmd Lmd If optimization tool are skewing, magnet thickness and magnet
embrace.

Figure 1. Direct axis equivalent circuit of PMSG.

In low speed applications cogging torque value is very
important and it must be as low as possible. Cogging torque is
a tendency of magnets to the nearest stator pole so if the wind
Rs ʘe ʄsd LIq has low speed, wind turbine may not have chance to rotate. For
reducing the cogging torque value, skewing can be used. [4].
isq Parametrical analysis of skewing value and its effect on
Vsq ʄsq ʄmq Lmq cogging torque is shown in Fig 6. Skewing has good effect on
cogging torque reduction but it decreases also the back EMF
constant. Hence there is tradeoff between them. Optimum
Figure 2. Quadrature axis equivalent circuit of PMSG.
value for skewing is selected as 0.125 slot where the cogging
B. Electromagnetical Design of PMSG torque is around 3.5 mNm.
In this section, design issues of electromagnetic design of
PMSG are discussed then finite element analysis results are

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CoggingTorqueParameter [mNewtonMeter
CoggingTorqueParameter [mNewtonMeter
87.50 500.00
Name X Y
75.00 m1 0.0500 12.3086
400.00
m2 0.1250 3.5448
Name X Y

m1 0.8000 82.3158
62.50
300.00
50.00
200.00
37.50

25.00 100.00 m1

m1
12.50 0.00
m2 0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00
emb
0.00
0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00
skew (a)
93.75
m1
Figure 6. Cogging torque variation of PMSG by changing skewing.
92.50
Magnet thickness is another parameter for optimization.

EfficiencyParameter
Name X Y

Magnet thickness has great effect on PMSG performance. Most 91.25

m1 0.8000 93.2287

important effect can be seen in load angle (or torque angle)

which is shown in Fig 7(a). As magnet thickness increases load 90.00
angle decreases as well. To decide the thickness we should also
look at the magnet flux density. As expected, it increases with 88.75
magnetic thickness is shown in Fig 7(b). But also the magnet
costs increases with thickness so 8 mm is selected. 87.50
0.50 0.60 0.70 0.80 0.90 1.00
emb
Embrace ratio of the magnet was also investigated in terms (b)
of its effect on cogging torque and efficiency. These are shown Figure 8. Cogging Torque (a) and efficiency (b) variation of PMSG by
in Fig 8. The optimum point is 0.8 for this generator. The final changing magnet embrace ratio.
optimized version of PMSG is given in Fig 9.
21.50
21.00
TorqueAngleParameter [deg]

20.50 Name X Y

m1 8.0000 18.1151
20.00
19.50
19.00
18.50
m1
18.00
17.50
17.00
5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00
magnet thic [mm]
(a)
1.02
MagnetFluxDensityParameter [tesla]

Name X Y

m1 8.0000 0.9816
1.00
m1
0.98

0.96

0.94

0.92

0.90
Figure 9. The 3D picture of the permanent magnet synchronous generator.
0.88
5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00
magnet thic [mm]

(b) III. MODAL ANALYSIS OF PMSG

Figure 7. Torque angle (a) and magnet flux density (b) variation of PMSG by
changing magnet thickness. In this section, modal analysis of PMSG is carried out to
find natural mode-frequencies which is the mainly source of
acoustic noise and mechanical fault events of electrical
machines. The natural mode frequencies are the specific points
and can be very important when the radial magnetic force of
PMSG includes these frequencies with high magnitude
because the machine can go into mechanical resonant. This
event may result in unexpected fault problems. At least it

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causes acoustic noise. To overcome this problem, magnetic Figure 11. The mode-2 shape result of PMSG stator.
force frequencies, especially main component, must be kept
away from the natural frequencies of PMSG.
The main acoustic noise in electrical machines is occurred
in stator which is also weakest point in terms of natural mode
frequencies in PMSG. Therefore only stator geometry is
considered in mechanical subjects. The modal shapes of stator
are quite different from each other which are given in [7]. The
related mode frequency results are given in Table II. Mode 0,
mode 2 and mode 4 have major effect on acoustic noise.
In rated speed that is 150 rpm, the magnetic excitation
frequency is 40 Hz. With considering worst case by
multiplying two that corresponds to 300 rpm mechanical
speed, the excitation frequency becomes 80 Hz. The lowest
mode frequency is found 794 Hz that is ten times bigger than
main excitation frequency. This result shows that only tenth or
bigger harmonics in current can interact with the mode-1
which has small effect in acoustic noise. The related mode Figure 12. The mode-3 shape result of PMSG stator.
shape results are in Fig 10-Fig 14. In conclusion, there is no
mechanical trouble for manufacturing this generator. The
simulation results are provided from Ansys Workbench.

TABLE II. NATURAL MODE FREQUENCIES OF PMSG STATOR

Mode Number Frequency (Hz)
Mode-1 794
Mode-2 859.51
Mode-3 1885.8
Mode-4 2038.3
Mode-5 2702.7

Figure 13. The mode-4 shape result of PMSG stator.

Figure 10. The mode-1 shape result of PMSG stator.

Figure 14. The mode-5 shape result of PMSG stator.

IV. DESIGNING OF POWER CONVERTER

A. Power Processing Topologies

Power processing is another important issue for wind
turbine applications. Power converter directly affects the wind
turbine dynamic characteristic. The first thing in converter
design is to decide the topology of the converter. There are
some topologies for wind turbine applications in literature and
industry. The main issue is power line which can be either AC
or DC. If the application is fed in DC side, then it does not

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require AC converting. But if application needs to be feed in Simulation study is done with the coupled simulation by
AC side, like a grid, then it requires AC converting (inverting) inserting designed generator finite element model in
and synchronization with line frequency. simulation. This provides us more reliable results. Lots of study
in literature use linear model of wind turbine generator that
Direct current (DC) applications frequently have batteries does not consider magnetic saturation effect. Generator
for energy storage. As known, PMSG output has varying performance cannot be observed in realistic with linear model.
frequency AC which is proportional to the rotor speed, Thus, the results that are obtained from coupled simulation, can
therefore phases output must be converted to DC. For give us opportunity to see the performance of designed
converting there are some topologies these are; uncontrolled generator more realistic without doing experimental. More
rectifier, uncontrolled rectifier-DC/DC converter and PWM details about the coupled simulation can be found in previous
rectifier as shown in Fig 15. publication by authors[8].
PMSG Load Varying DC
B. Control Technique
Uncontrolled Rectifier Wind turbine control algorithm that was held using
MATLAB-Simulink will be mentioned in this section. There
are two isolated control loop in uncontrolled rectifier-DC/DC
PMSG Battery
converter-inverter topology, one is for DC/DC converter and
Regulated DC
the other one is for inverter. The schematic diagram of these
Uncontrolled Rectifier DC/DC
two algorithms can be seen from Fig 17. Boost type DC/DC
converter is used to control PMSG power flow considering
PMSG Battery
maximum power point tracking (MPPT). Whereas three phase
inverter is used to regulate DC bus voltage level. In this
PWM Rectifier
Regulated DC application; 1:2 transformer is used in front of the grid
connection so 400 VDC bus voltage reference is enough to
Figure 15.ACtoDC power conversion topologies in wind turbine applications.
transfer power from wind turbine to the grid which has
Alternating current (AC) applications has additional 220Vrms with 50Hz. Note that primer side of transformer is
converter for reconverting DC to AC which is called inverter. 110Vrms. Transformer used in this application provides us
This converter may have one phase, or any phase number. For some benefits such as lower cost power elements due to the
very low power applications, only one phase is used for lower voltage and higher low voltage ride through (LVRT)
inverting. But for medium and high power level, wind turbines capability which prevents the damage of power converters.
feed in three phase grid so three phase inverter that is common For effective utilization of DC bus space vector algorithm is
in industry. AC feed in topologies as shown in Fig 16 either carried out in PWM generation.
may have DC/DC converter or PWM rectifier in front of DC/DC Inverter Transformer

inverter. For medium and high power case, PWM rectifier is PMSG
commonly used. These two topologies have some advantages
and disadvantages. In DC/DC converter type; it has cost Uncontrolled Rectifier
1:2
Grid
advantage, whereas PMSG cannot be utilized efficiently and Duty
PMSG used in low power factor because of the uncontrolled -
+
PI
Vdc

rectifier. In PWM rectifier case, PMSG can produce power at -

+
PI
iqref PWM

unity power factor and therefore efficiency of generator can MPPT 0

idref
Generation

Vdc ref
reach its highest value. However this topology has cost
disadvantage compare to other one. It can be noted that for Figure 17. Wind turbine control strategies for this study.
same output power level, uncontrolled rectifier-DC/DC
topology causes more power dissipation in system and it The related results of coupled simulation are shown in
increases the temperature of the generator. In our study, cost is following figures. Fig 18 shows the generator one phase
brought to forefront so uncontrolled rectifier-DC/DC converter voltage and current. As expected the generator voltage and
and three phase inverter topology is chosen for analyzing. current have harmonic components that are occur because of
the uncontrolled rectifier. Reactive power consists for two
reasons; phase leg between each component of voltage and
PMSG C current and total harmonic distortion (THD).

Uncontrolled Rectifier DC/DC Inverter Grid

PMSG C

PWM Rectifier Inverter Grid

Figure 16. AC side power conversion topologies in wind turbine applications.

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XY Plot 30 ANSOFT

118.38
Curve Info
AM1.I
410
15.00 TR
VM2.V
TR

405
10.00 62.50

DC Bus Voltage (V)

5.00 400

VM2.V [V]
AM1.I [A]

0.00 0.00
395

-5.00
390
-10.00 -62.50
385
-15.00

-117.87
1.84 1.85 1.86 1.87 1.89 1.90 1.91 1.92 380
Time [s] 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
Time (s)

Figure 18. Coupled simulation results of generator one phase current and Figure 21. DC bus voltage reference and simulation result of DC bus.
voltage.
V. CONCLUSION
Grid side inverter output current and grid voltage in
primary side of transformer is given in Fig 19. As expected In this paper, direct drive outer rotor small-scale wind
power factor of output power is close by 1.0 because reactive turbine design issues are discussed. Then one design with 2.5
power component of output current (id) is given zero. There kW power level is performed. Main components in wind
are some small high frequency ripples that are caused by small turbine are definitely generator and power converters. After
filter inductor and 10 kHz switching frequency but it can be electromagnetic design stage, the mechanical subjects are
said that current wave shape is like a pure sinusoidal. mentioned in case of mechanical resonance and acoustic noise.
The mechanical analysis results show that there is no trouble
Fig 20 shows the speed variation of PMSG which
in design. Then power converter topologies are also mentioned
demonstrate the control algorithm of DC/DC works very well.
and one of them is selected to see the performance of
It should be noted here that there is no MPPT algorithm yet.
Only 150 rpm reference speed is given. DC bus voltage generator and converter. The results indicate that performance
variation with respect to the 400 V reference is given in Fig 21. of generator does not only depend on design process of
There is small overshoot in bus voltage with 10V. It shows that generator. It also depends on the right choice of power
dynamic response of controller is acceptable. converter topology. For power converters; there are several
XY Plot 29 ANSOFT
topologies. Each of them has some advantages and
150.00 Curve Info
VM5.V
15.00 disadvantages. Finally, control algorithm is given and their
100.00
TR

TR
AM2.I

10.00
results are shared. In future study, the acoustic noise
prediction algorithm will be done which provides the related
50.00 5.00 acoustic level of exterior PMSG wind turbine in design
VM5.V [V]

AM2.I [A]

0.00 0.00
process.

-50.00 -5.00 VI. REFERENCES

[1] Kyoung-Jin Ko, Seok-Myeong Jang, Ji-Hoon Park, Han-Wook Cho and
-100.00 -10.00 Dae-Joon You, “Electromagnetic performance analysis of wind power
generator with outer permanent magnet rotor based on turbine
-150.00 -15.00
characteristics variation over mominal wind speed,” IEEE Trans. on
1.728 1.737 1.750 1.762 1.775 1.787 1.797 Magnetics, vol. 47, No 10, October 2011.
Time [s]
Figure 19. Coupled simulation results of inverter one phase output current and [2] Global Wind Energy Council(GWEC), “Global wind report-Annual
primary side of transformer. market update 2013,” 2013.
160
[3] Yusuf Yasa, “Simulation and experimental analysis of doubly-fed
140
induction generator under grid faults,” Master Thesis, May 2013.
[4] A. Olano, V. Moreno, J. Molina, I. Zubia, “Design and construction of
120 an outer-rotor PM synchronous generator for small wind turbines;
comparing real results with those of FE model,”Proceedings of the 2008
100
International Conference on Electrical Machines, Paper ID 998, 2008.
Speed (rpm)

80 [5] Jianyi Chen, Chemmangot V. Nayar, Longya XU, “Design and finite-
element analysis of an outer-rotor permanent-magnet generator for
60 directly coupled wind turbines,” IEEE transactions on magnetics, Vol.
36, No 5, September 2000.
40
[6] Chee-Mun Ong, "Dynamic Simulations of Electric Machiner: Using
20 Matlab/Simulink", 2009, Prentice Hall PTR.
[7] M.N. Anwar, Iqbal Husain, “Radial Force Calculation and Acoustic
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 Noise Prediction in Switched Reluctance Machines”, IEEE Transactions
Time (s)
on Industry Applications, Vol. 35 Issue 6, 2000.
Figure 20. Simulation results of generator speed . [8] Yusuf Yasa, Yilmaz Sozer, Erkan Mese, “Unbalanced fault analysis of
doubly fed induction generator drive system for wind turbine
applications,” Applied Power Electronics Conference(APEC), pp 2953-
2960, March 2013.

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